Get Up, Stand Up ... for the CIA

Dr. Lowell Taubman¹s Counterfeit
Analysis of the Origins of Bob Marley¹s Cancer

By Alex Constantine
Copyright, 2001

In January, I was a guest on James Whale¹s Sports Talk, an AM radio
show that airs in London, to discuss my latest book, The Covert War Against
Rock (Feral House, 2000), a study of a dozen or so rock star deaths as
political assassinations. Whale mentioned that he is a huge fan of the late
Bob Marley. He was generally receptive to the evidence I presented, but
adopted the usual ³devil¹s advocate² role when I responded to his question
regarding Marley¹s prolonged, agonizing death by cancer. I explained that it
was my belief, after examining events leading to the diagnosis, that Marley
had been injected with a carcinogenic substance.
This statement evidently alarmed Jahlight, the proprietor of the
official Wailers UK Web site (http://www.wailers.co.uk/). ³While the James
Whale show was on air,² an anonymous spokesman for Jahlight later reported,
³we e-mailed the station to point out some of the facts behind Bob's death.
Unfortunately, by the time we made contact, the phone link with Constantine
had ended but Mr. Whale was kind enough to read our message as the debate
continued.²
So the interview ended politely but statements were made about Marley¹s
death and myself after the fact and I was not given an opportunity to
respond. ³Constantine seems to suggest that somehow the CIA gave Bob
cancer,² Jahlight reported in its newsletter, ³an often told fairy tale that
has sadly passed into Marley folklore.²
Fairy tale? ³The truth is that Bob died of a Melanoma - skin cancer,
which cannot be caused by smoking, neither can it be injected into the
victim. Constantine suggests that Marley was visited six months before by
CIA officers, and then fell seriously ill with cancer, forgetting the fact
that cancer had already been discovered in Bob three years earlier in 1977.²
Was this the ²truth?² Actually, I have never stated or written that
Marley was injected with the unknown carcinogen six months before his death.
This particular ³truth² is fatuous. I DID say that the injection took place
six months before he CONTRACTED cancer, IN LATE 1976, a week after a
a death squad hit on his home on Hope Road in Jamaica. (See pp. 153-53 of
War Against Rock for the details.)
The Covert Jahlight¹s ³truth² was not heaven-sent. If anyone was indulging in
³fairy tales,² it was Jahlight. ³Somehow the CIA gave Bob cancer....² CIA
experiments in the induction of cancer are well-known (see below) and not
difficult to ascertain.
My Jahlight critic went on to imply that money was my motive for
writing the book: ³Also on the show he told stories of Jimi Hendrix and
Brian Jones, the latter in which he claims to have four eye-witness accounts
to the late Rolling Stones murder. During the discussion, a telephone caller
asked why some other artists had not been featured in the book, and
tellingly Constantine revealed that if this book does well, he will feature
them in a follow up.²
I ³told stories² about the deaths of Jones and Hendrix? Famed
historian A.E. Hotchner, in Blown Away (Fireside, 1990), a book about the
Rolling Stones, published interviews with the four eye-witnesses, all close
friends of Brian Jones, who had observed the forced drowning of the rock
star at Cotchford Farms. The accused killer of Brian Jones even confessed on
his deathbed ‹ testimony acceptable in most courts of law (See, Murder
Claims Raise Doubts over Rolling Stone¹s Death,² Independent, April 4, 1994,
p. 2). Anna Wohlin, one of the eye-witnesses, published The Murder of Brian
Jones (1999), complementing Hotchner¹s conclusion that Jones had been
murdered.
By this same token, I hadn¹t ³told stories² about the death of Jimi
Hendrix, either. Many of Hendrix¹s friends and associates have stated
publicly that they believed the virtuoso was the victim of foul-play. The
Covert War Against Rock contains a fairly thorough examination of the facts
surrounding his death, and concludes that he had, in fact, been murdered.
(The Hendrix chapter is posted in full at
http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/, in the Covert War section).
I do not apologize for my motives in writing the book. It was not
written for money. I have written about political assassinations for 14
years and profit has never been a factor.
I responded to Jahlight¹s critique by e-mail. It was graciously
published with little comment. However, the Web site noted that anyone
curious about Marley¹s cancer read an interview with Dr. Lowell Taubman
(posted on the Net)
The interview aired on a Fox affiliate (a network on intimate terms
with the CIA). This is the source of Jahlight¹s flat assertion that the
Agency could not possibly have killed Bob Marley ‹ a doctor who couldn¹t be
bothered to review the medical records or even speak to Marley¹s physician
... and has obviously done no research on the CIA¹s experiments with toxic
substances:

Lowell B. Taubman, MD

Q: What is your knowledge about Cancer?
A: I do not claim to be an expert in Dermatology or
Cancer, but I am a Board Certified Internist which is
a specialist in Internal Medicine, and I also completed
an extra 2 years of training in Geriatric Medicine.

Q: You are also a big Reggae fan. Did you follow the
Bob Marley Story? Please tell me about your knowledge.
A: I first heard Bob Marley in college, and I was asked to
write an article about Bob Marley's Cancer/Malignant
Melanoma. Some of the issues I addressed were genetic
transmission, black vs. white incidence, could the CIA
have given or transmitted the Cancer, could the Melanoma
have been injected into Bob, and finally could trauma
(hurting your toe) cause Melanoma....

Q: What is the treatment for this sort of thing, and did he
follow the treatment?
A: I should say that I have not seen the medical records,
nor have spoken to the physician.... I cannot say whether
the Melanoma was diagnosed or misdiagnosed appropriately....

Q: So you cannot speak with any authority on what the
treatment was or how he should have been treated.
A: Well, in the later stages I could. Most likely ...

Q: What do you think about this? Can someone inject
Melanoma into someone?
A: Well, to the best of my knowledge, it is NOT POSSIBLE.
I will try to simplify this. If I give you a piece of my
tissue to you, your body will reject it. So you cannot
take cancer from one person and inject it into another
person. Let me clarify that. It's sort of like a heart
transplant. For immunological reasons, the body would
reject the implanted tissue/heart. Science has now
figured out a way to block the tissue rejection with
strong medications.

Is it true that injecting a cancer-causing substance into a human body
is ³not possible?²
Edward T. Haslam, a political-medical researcher in northern
California, is the author of Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey Virus: The Story of
an Underground Medical Laboratory (Wordsworth Communications, 1995),
one of the most credible books on CIA experimentation in recent years.
The book details the history of one of many paths of federal experiments
with carcinogenic viruses. Haslam: ³In the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet scientists
were ahead of U.S. scientists in certain areas of medical research, one of
which was cancer-causing monkey viruses.... Whatever the motive, the U.S.
government wanted the work done. The money was provided for researching
monkey viruses through convenient channels, but the doctors were not
supposed to talk about it. In the process, New Orleans became one of the
leading centers of knowledge about immunology and retro-viruses. The doctors
who specialized in pathology had access to this knowledge, to these monkeys
and to their viruses.²
³A History of Secret U.S. Government Programs,² posted on a number of
Internet sites, notes that as early as 1931, there has been documented
federal interest in the creation of a cancer-causing agents: ³Dr. Cornelius
Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells. He later goes on
to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah,
and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.² In 1975,
³the virus section of Fort Detrick's Center for Biological Warfare Research
is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the
supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a
special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to
develop cancer-causing viruses.²
Ironically enough, one site on the Net devoted to Bob Marley
(http://www.7mac.com/home/academy/CIA_reggae4.htm), disagrees with
Dr. Taubman, and asks: ³DID THE CIA CAUSE MARLEY'S DEATH IN 1981
FROM CANCER?² The discussion concludes: ³At least 9 years before Bob
Marley's death to melanoma cancer, the capability of induced cancer in
laboratory animals is reported to have been a fait accompli.²
Perhaps Dr. Taubman is mistaken:

³Among our favorite research journals is Covert Action
Quarterly. The Winter 1991-92 issue featured an exposé
written by Richard Hatch entitled "Cancer Warfare." In the
article, Hatch examines the history of research into possibly
cancer-causing agents during the years immediately after
then-President Richard Nixon's 1969 order to halt U.S. offensive
weapons research and stockpiling of biological warfare (BW)
agents. The government extracted big propaganda over the
destruction of the Army's BW stocks of toxins, viruses and
bacteria that had been developed as weapons of mass destruction.
Less-known at the time was that certain of the stored materials,
along with a number of BW researchers, went to work for other
branches of the government, including the CIA and the National
Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI, a wing of the National Institutes
of Health (NIH), subsequently embarked upon "a highly politicized
public relations effort" as part of Nixon's "War on Cancer."
According to Hatch's article, the "stated aim of the program
was to organize experiments aimed at finding cancer-causing
viruses." Hatch described the program as such:

Potentially cancer-causing viruses were collected, grown
in huge amounts, and distributed through the VCP; thousands
of animals were infected experimentally, and the aerosol
distribution of carcinogenic viruses was studied.

As a key component of the NCI's Viral Cancer Program (VCP),
the government enlisted the assistance of what Hatch calls
"The Military-University Complex." Chief among the numerous
universities which became a part of this vast pseudo-biowarfare
network are some of this country's most prestigious research
colleges including Johns Hopkins University, University of
Maryland, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University and UC
Berkeley (which helps manage the U.S. Naval Biosciences
Laboratory). Some of this university-based research is quite
alarming in its broad implications. Hatch continues:

While UC Berkeley appears to have been at the heart of aerosol
BW research, it was by no means alone. Other Universities
collaborated with the BW effort while working on the VCP in
parallel. From 1955 to 1965, the Ohio State University College
of Medicine conducted research for Fort Detrick into the aerosol
transmission of BW agents including tularemia and Q fever. I
n some of these studies, prisoners from the Ohio State Penitentiary
were used as guinea pigs. Between 1952 and 1969, the affiliated
Ohio State University Research Foundation had eight contracts
with the U.S. Army for BW research. [Tularemia ("rabbit fever")
and Q fever were ultimately stockpiled by the U.S. Army.]

Before he worked with UC, Dr. [Alfred] Hellman supervised an NCI
contract for Ohio State University. Designed to study the aerosol
transmission of cancer-causing viruses, this research started in
1965 and continued at least until 1972. The principal investigator
for this work, Dr. Richard Griesemer, would eventually succeed in
giving tumors to mice and monkeys.

If the reported success of Richard Griesemer is accurate, we [can]
determine that at least nine years before Bob Marley's death to
cancer, the capability of induced cancer in laboratory animals is
reported to have been a ³fait accompli.²

In addition, there was cooperation between the military research
community and numerous corporations, including two major
defense biosciences contractors: Charles Pfizer & Co. and Litton-
Bionics. A number of notable researchers evolved from this
network, some of which are associated with some of America's
more sinister and secretive research. These include: Robert Gallo
(NCI), Jack Gruber (NIH), Alfred Hellman (US Air Force), James
Duff (US Army), Richard Griesemer (Department Of Energy-the
agency exposed in 1993 for its involvement in widespread human
radiation experiments) and Seymour Kalter (NCI). Throughout my
extensive research into some of the greatest conspiracies of
our time, certain of these names appear in the midst of some
disturbing activities.

It serves us well to remember the names of such individuals
and to remain vigilant to their activities In addition, this secret
research into cancer-causing agents partially overlapped with
the CIA's projects MK-ULTRA (covert human experimentation
with psychedelic drugs and "other chemical agents") and
MK-NAOMI (the agency's managing of biological toxins and
diseases, some of which, as revealed in congressional hearings,
were utilized in attempted assassinations of foreign leaders).
This becomes highly relevant when we consider that it is the
CIA that is most suspected as having a clandestine influence in
the lives and deaths of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.

Yet Dr. Taubman¹s professional opinion comes to the opposite
conclusion: ³To summarize ... it was highly unlikely that Bob was injected
with Melanoma that caused his cancer.²
How ³unlikely² is it when 40 years ago, a CIA experimenter could write
in his journal: ³... It was noted in the tests that the application of
carcinogens does NOT always produce a malignancy.... It is noted that the
methylcholanthrene failed to give a 100% result² (Mary, Ferrie & the Monkey
virus, p. 193). The researcher, Haslem reports, ³had better results with
merasptopterin, aminopterin, anyivin, magnesium tracinate² (p. 194).
If cancer could be induced by the CIA in the early 1960s, why is it³not
possible² in 1976?
Perhaps it was not so ³unlikely² after all. The CIA had threatened to
kill Bob Marely (see Catch a Fire, by Timothy White, for the full text of
the threat and the reggae artists¹ CIA problems in general). He was the
heart of the Rastafarian movement and its voice. Dr. Taubman offers no
evidence of weight to refute the charge that the CIA DID kill Bob Marely.
His statements to the contrary are, in fact, wrong-headed, even vaguely
amusing to researchers of CIA subterfuge. But Taubman¹s (and Jahlight¹s)
massive irresponsiblity in publicly exonerating the Agency is not amusing in
the least.
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Alex Constantine¹s Political Conspiracy Research Bin:
http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/